SpaceX Triples Number of Rocket Launches in Two Years.

Sources:

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Stop supporting Elon.
- SpaceX is more than just Elon.
  
  As with X, I'll support it as soon as he's out.
  
  Ya, it's also massive ecological damage so we can all go "ooooh ahhh!"
  https://www.space.com/rocket-launches-environmental-impact
  https://cosmosmagazine.com/space/astrophysics/greenhouse-gas-space-x/
- All these pro SpaceX news is coming out before the election and after everyone was making fun of Musk on stage.
  The people posting these images are either astroturfers or fell victim to astroturfers.

And launching space junk and making viewing the stars less and less clear at an historic rate.

And they're on track for ~130 this year.
- How many already launched?
  
  96 as of September 29 https://spaceexplored.com/spacex-launches-2024/

It's cool that spaceX has rockets can come back and be reused.
China just fires unregulated rockets that in danger people, wild life etc. from toxic and debrid
China rocket crashes after 'accidental' launch
Chinese rocket debris seen falling over village after launch
- Good vid from real engineering on the subject
  https://youtu.be/Dsk0aIRrHb4
  
  Yes very good video, thanks 👍

Out of curiosity - how many megatons of carbon has that produced, and how many billionaires will all the starships carry when they've exploited the earth's resources and left all it's living creatures to die and escape to mars?
- SpaceX launches in 2023 were about 0.02 megatons of CO2 directly. I don't know how fugitive emissions from fueling and defueling, especially on starship with methane.
  https://space.stackexchange.com/questions/13082/calculate-falcon-9-co2-emissions
  200,000kg/launch, 100 launches.
- The carbon is not the problem.
  https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/satellite-mega-constellations-could-jeopardize-ozone-hole-recovery

I'm a Rocket Lab fan. Tons of innovation, slower progress due to not having the richest man behind, but on track to launch a reusable medium rocket, FULLY reusable and with a sensible guy at the helm.
- I wish rocket lab the best and hope that one day they can have a competing heavy lift/human certified spacecraft.
  However, it's nigh impossible to ignore how much SpaceX alone has reshaped the space industry and is basically forcing everybody else to step up.
  
  Agree, say what you want but spaceX is in a league of their own currently. Especially with the recent starship heavy booster catch, the biggest rocket ever launched caught mid air! They're on track for a human space landing.
- You taking neutron? That still has a disposable upper stage.
- The best thing for humanity now would be for multiple people to develop reusable spacecraft. For greater chance that someone will land on a new innovation.

SpaceX launched about 429,125 kg of spacecraft upmass in Q1, followed by CASC with about 29,426 kg
Smaller satellites (<1,200 kg) represented 96% of spacecraft launched in Q1, 76% of total upmass
So the way I'm personally reading this is 2/3 of this is starlink launches

The chart says companies/space agency, so I am assuming that NASA stopped launching rockets? It sounds concerning to put all the egg into the basket of private enterprises.
- Indeed, NASA stopped launching rockets with the space shuttle. But that was the single best decision that NASA ever made. The space shuttle was an extremely expensive death trap. (It was damn cool, but a terrible way to get to space)
  It sounds concerning to put all the egg into the basket of private enterprises.
  You can blame the trump administration for that, with their commercial cargo and commercial crew programs. But the truth is, NASA has always heavily relied upon private companies, it's just that in the past they were all defense contractors (Boeing, Northrop, lockheed, rocketdyne, ULA). The other annoying truth, these commercial programs have actually been wildly successful (except in the case of Boeing's participation).
  But it's been wildly successful in a few respects, one of which is that nasa has been able to focus on exploration again. Without having to support the huge costs of the shuttle program, they've been able to put a lot of their money into landers, interplanetary probes and space telescopes. I think we have more ongoing exploration missions than ever before. The Europa clipper mission launched just yesterday (on a SpaceX Rocket coincidentally). https://science.nasa.gov/mission/europa-clipper/
  
  I wonder if NASA would ever bring back the space plane idea they had before the space shuttle plan got co-opted by a bunch of interest groups and turned into the boondoggle that it became.
- put all the egg into the basket of private enterprises.
  Kind of the opposite - instead of the one rocket program NASA could have done, we have ULA, Blue Origin, and SpaceX. There’s multiple baskets now

I watched the recent test of catching the returning second stage booster in the chopsticks, and had a lump in my throat. Absolutely fucking amazing, nobody is in the same league as that crew.

All those launches being subsidized and facilitated with US tax dollars while he used it to put telecom satellites up.
- US buys launches at the same rate as everyone else. NASA chipped in a few million to get falcon 9 off the ground, but they haven't been subsidizing for years.
  
  Thats weird because Musk claims to be operating with "federal agency activity" for Space Force in his bid to appeal the decision in California to take away his launch license. The purpose of the planned increase in launches to 50 and 100 in the next two years? To launch the newer version of Starlink and do a small amount of testing on in-space refueling.
- Most of the Falcon 9 launches are for Starlink and are paid for by SpaceX themselves. How is that "the government subsidizing them"? If you want to argue that they're using money they got from NASA to fund those launches, is your plumber feeding their family from you subsidizing their life?

Damn, the absolute collapse of the European space industry...

With ISRO coming on strong, and Russia alienating most of the world, I’m fascinated by what this could turn into in the next couple years

image licensed under cc by-sa!
edit: wrong! cc by-nd!
- That's CC BY-ND, not CC BY-SA
  
  doesn't that have a slash?

I wonder if elon has been testing all these rockets in a desperate attempt to escape the planet with a bunch of other billionaires now that global warming is on track to destroy us. It would help me understand why the wealthy all seem so hell bent on accelerating the destruction.
- IDK. They will certainly be fine here, on earth. Even if everything else goes to shit, they will continue living in luxury.
  On a spaceship / station / Mars colony though? As much as I love sci-fi, living there will be ROUGH, regardless of how rich you are.
  I think it's more an ego thing: "I want to go down in history as the first human on another planet, lest I be forgotten" combined with an unhealthy dose of not giving a fuck about other people, which is kinda a prerequisite to being a billionaire in the first place.
  
  Fair points! Elon is already likely to go down in history, but not for good reasons.

~~France X5 and~~ india X3
- Big respect to ISRO, but you read France's Arianespace backwards. They were more of an X/5 situation.
  
  You are right... my head was looking for positive changes for some reason. What happened with france?

In the meantime Arianespace divided by 3 their number of rocket launches

But remember to pee in the shower itt use a bike

73 comments